When a smile is the only thing left in translation...

 …There is a flower that goes by the name of yesterday, today, and tomorrow, it bears three shades of a single color, going from white to pastel to a vibrant coloration of itself in a matter of three days.  Essentially, what it was yesterday it will no longer be today and what it is today it will no longer be tomorrow.  And yet, as charming a metaphor as I instantaneously took this, it quickly reminded me of a sad truth that overwhelms me in my research here as a budding anthropologist.  Many of you know that what I’ve come here to do is finish up the last few pages of my first college experience.  My project, which seeks to find purpose in understanding and contextualizing some of the most prevalent food traditions in South India, namely those found in the states of Kerala and Karnataka, has been the entire reason for my venturing all this way.  What you may not know are some of the crude realities that have kept me so curious in coming.  In my studies, over the last four years, I have had to face up to one cold truth, and that is that the cultures of yesterday, those that have filled me with passion for my field of study, today, are no longer here,  and that those of today are hurriedly fleeting as I speak.  I have had to realize that the basic truth of our species progression results indefinitely not only in growth but in death as well. And that no matter how much you may love something as it was, it is a fruitless endeavour to attempt to maintain it in a world constantly changing around it.  In regards to my research, which I must admit is still early in coming and affected greatly by my inability to converse in Malayalam, I have found that traditional food related knowledge has fleeted from the commoner’s recollection.  Even from those that understand me well, my questions are puzzling and always responded to with question like answers.  I did not realize how ambitious my questions were until I began to ask the people that I only assumed would know the answers.  This is not to say that I haven’t gotten any relative information, but it is to say, that what I’ve learned from books is far changed from what I’ve seen.  I suppose maybe it is already noon time, yesterday…

Our days spent in Munnar have been incredibly fast and it’s become quite impossible to keep up with the days, let alone the time.  What seem to be only hour long ventures into town or towards the mountains turn out to be 4-5 hour journeys that leave our day at its end.  We’ve accomplished our fair bit of lounging about, what with me now cooking our breakfasts and dinners, and have managed a visit to a near by national park, temple, mosque, and spice garden.  Dressing and “bobbing” the part of an Indian pays off a lot in India, and we have had the fortunate luck of being treated like locals when asking for help to get from place to place.  Despite Ian’s initial discomfort, we’ve made the public bus our main means of transport to get around.  It’s a hell of ride that has your head and body bouncing around every mountain curve on the verge of tipping over, but for a ¼ of the price of any rickshaw or taxi, we’ve decided to embrace the pros rather then the cons.  You have to deal with the smells, the crowds, the uncertainty, and the turbulence, but you also get to view the horizons through large glassless windows, get to breathe the fresh mountain air in deeply, offer waves and smiles to the school children and the tea plantation workers, make little staring babies laugh with silly faces, and best of all you get the feeling that you fit in just a little bit better.   The local people seem to get a real kick out of us riding along side them, as no tourist is ever seen riding in a public bus, and offer us smiles that seem to let me know they approve of our courage and humble curiosity to live amongst them. 

This past week has had me for long hours hunched over my grinding stone and stovetop.  Ian spotted a cookbook at a nearby restaurant we ate at one afternoon and I have been obsessing over it since. The book, compiled by a woman from Kerala, is a collection of her own families and friends keralan style recipes.  Although some look rather unpleasant, for the sake of my research, I have been delving into them to get a better idea of how these ingredients compliment one another and make up the distinct palate that is Kerala’s cuisine.  I have learned that most all dishes contain ginger, chilly powder, turmeric, coriander, onions, curry leaves, and green chilies.  There is only a handful, mostly those that our sweet, that don’t have these as their staple ingredients.  Cardamom, which is also a much loved spice in the cuisine, as well as pepper, is widely grown within household spice gardens, often alongside coffee and an ayurvedic plant known as Tullu in Malayalam, which bears a root that is used as a curing agent against mild influenzas.  The spices that make up Garam Masala, nutmeg, cloves, cinnamon, cardamom, star anis, ginger, pepper, and geera, though not usually all grown in the home are also widely used in the cuisine.  A lot of my recent research has revolved around the properties of these spices as the knowledge of how to harvest, dry, store, and use then is as old I’m sure as the day the land first brought them to the people.  Upon my recent visit to the spice garden the guide gave me a vanilla pod, I am in the midst of drying it out to use for my coffee and oatmeal, it takes a weeks time.  The book I am reading right now, titled Eating India, explains a lot of the historical context behind some of India’s indigenous and brought over spices.  It paints a fuller picture of the spices background and lends me understanding as to why so much is known about the peppercorn and yet so little about the nutmeg seed.  I recommend it to anyone interested in my topic of study; the author is a brilliant writer with a refreshingly large knowledge bank of her home state Bombay, India.  She compares and contrasts different regions of India to that of Bombay, all with an obvious love and passion for food and its history in the country…good read to say the least. 

Since the last time I wrote, things have changed indefinitely, and I as well as Ian find ourselves in these sort of odd states of mind that either have us looking obliviously happy, confused, or upset.  I have been straining my mind with ways to get at research opportunities, and Ian stretching his recorded sounds in any which way he can fathom.  We are both craving a bit more then we have at the moment, and realize that the most frustrating bit of it all is that everything either of us could possibly want is literally in arms reach, just waiting for us to find and grab it. Researching via the internet seems more of a waste of concentration then anything else, as I know sitting outside for an hour watching the people go by will give me more valuable insight then any e-book or scholarly journal could ever hope to. I underestimated the importance of patience and Ian has helped me understand this, as he, as the ambitious musician that he is, has battled with it much more then I’ve ever had to.  Transitioning from a student researcher to a fieldwork researcher is something that cannot be taught, only experienced, and it comes with its fair share of hesitations, doubts, and frustrations, I am overwhelmed in the midst of these realizations, and although it is challenging, it is one of the best lessons I’ve ever had to learn.  We only have another couple weeks or so before we head north to Mangalore in the state of Karnataka, and my feelings about this are mixed.  We have built somewhat of a presence for ourselves here in Munnar, and I have grown attached to the familiar faces that now recognize us in the vegetable market and in the neighboring houses to our homestay.  Even a small little kitty seems to know us, and curls up close to us when we pet her.  In a small town like Munnar I guess such a feeling is impossible to avoid, but I know my research has limited outlets here, and if we stay it will be only because we are comfortable.  The host of our homestay has given me a couple leads in advising me to talk to the head baker of a catering bakery in town (the only one of its kind), so that I might get an idea of what kinds of sweets are served at different types of events, as well as to the pastor of the Christian church near by, to see what kind of food offerings are brought in for the saints.  We are not allowed In the Hindu temple or the mosque, and I have been hesitant to linger about them for too long as to avoid any offense to the devotees.  I know Hindu rituals have much to do with food offerings and I am all to hopeful to enter at least one in my four month stay here to verify or rectify some of the things I’ve read about them.  I will be spending the last couple weeks interviewing these contacts and see who or where else they might be able to refer me to.  

Wednesday morning we decided it was time to return to the spice gardens.  After a quick breakfast of overly sweet oatmeal (we have been using sweet condensed milk as we do not have a fridge) we dressed and waited for the bus that would take us to Kullar.  After having hopped on the wrong bus, the conductor dropped us off at a nearby stop where we would soon be picked up by another bus that could take us to where we needed to go.  Ian, always on the prowl for a tasty treat, spotted these little deep fried fishes that he loves so much, being sold at a near by street vendor, he purchased a pack and happily munched away until our bus arrived.  The drive was bumpy and vibrant with wild life sounding in the trees and the ever changing shades of green consuming us the deeper and deeper we went.  We made it to the spice garden and sat with the hosts that were to guide us around the garden, I attempted to explain my research and the questions I was hoping to answer, and the friendly host tried his best to explain to the woman that would be guiding us, what I was hoping to learn.  She tried to answer my queries, and I thanked her wholeheartedly for this, as she shared all she knew about the ayurvedic plants that spotted the garden.  This in unison with my previous visit to the gardens was a good start to getting to know some of the knowledge that surrounded the most commonly used herbs and spices in this region of India.  I still have much to learn, and I am hoping that a visit to the tribal communities later on in my trip will give me a more in depth understanding as to how this knowledge was initially attained, and continuously shared.  Many of the village people here make up the labor population for both the tea plantations and the spice gardens, and a good 60% of them come from the neighboring state of Tamil Nadu.  This has made finding a translator to help me talk to them harder then I thought, and I’m left shifting through the knowledge that tea and spice store clerks have of their products.  It has been a challenge.

Our last weekend’s trip to the national park of Eravikulam, where a large indigenous population resides far past where the visitor is allowed to trek, was a hopeful step In the right direction.  I thought maybe I’d find an old woman crushing up cocoa beans to brew up a fresh batch of homemade chocolates, or maybe a skilled artisan selling handmade jewelry made of dried fruits and/or nuts.  These two items are sold everywhere in town, but the makers are said to live far beyond the eyes of any busy town.  Much to my dismay only the typical street vendors selling chili seasoned fruits (pineapples & mangoes J) and vegetables (corn and carrots) were all that lined the road leading to the ticket booth.  The homemade chocolates here are absolutely wonderful and I am all too hopeful to see how they’re made.  We’ve tried the bitter dark chocolate, which is far lighter then any dark chocolate I’ve had, walnut and chocolate, which is by far our favorite, and a white chocolate laced with dried fruits and nuts.  I only wish I could bring these home, especially the white and walnut chocolate, because mom I know you love your chocolate white, and gigi I know you love yours with walnuts,  but I know as soon as we venture out of the cool climate of Munnar these little treats will quickly melt.  Anna and Marya love chocolate but rarely get to enjoy it because away from Munnar chocolate is quite the commodity, having to be constantly refrigerated, making it cost a lot for a little.  I hope we can stop by Munnar on our way back down to Cochin to gather them up a couple bags. 

Other then my creative attempts to research much has been ok, and with only one quick trip to the hospital to get some antibiotics, I feel rather lucky that neither of us has gotten terribly ill.  (You wouldn’t believe how inexpensive it is to visit a hospital here and buy medicines…they truly are in it for the people) We’ve gotten a bit more curious and daring in trying street vendors and drinking hot water served in restaurants, but only because we’ve felt it safe and lucky for us it has always proven to be.  Ian has turned out to be pretty good at picking out fresh fish from the open market, so it’s been the only non-veg dish I’ve cooked.  I am still a bit leery about buying meat because it is not a hot item on the overall population’s grocery list, and so I’m not sure how fresh it will be.  And I still cannot get myself to watch an animal being slaughtered in front of me for the sake of simply feeding me.  I’ll take a bowl full of veggies above this any day of the week.  My hand is getting more skilled at spicing my curries, and I have successfully made several dishes that I think both Gigi’s would be proud of.  When I had initially cooked with Geigi my first impression was “wow how simple,” but now cooking on my own I realize it takes a knowing hand to spice each dish just right.  I had a most unfortunate lesson of this when I tried to recreate Geigi’s potato kari that I spiced so heavily with chili powder that it was completely inedible.  The only person that might have been able to eat it would be my friend Luis, and that is saying quite a lot for anyone who knows him.  Ian and I declared ourselves beaten by the one spice we always prided ourselves on being able to take.  We’ve got nothing on the Indian chili. 

If I am not cooking or researching, we are usually out an about, hiking up a well beaten path or munching at a side street vendor and watching the crowds hustle by.  On one of our hikes we spotted a snake, on another a giant squirrel, and still on another, a medium sized gray macaque.  The wildlife here is everywhere, and although at times it feels a bit scary when you’re walking through brush or cutting your way through with a stick, it is an amazing thing to see an animal in its natural habitat, simply living and thriving as it knows best.  You can appreciate them so much more when you see them In their element and the people that live here seem to know this best, posting habitat conservation signs wherever heavy traffic runs thru, to remind us all that this is not only our home but a multitude of other creatures as well.  It is an awful sight to see foreigners or just ill willed individual who will throw their trash wherever they please; it reminds me of how stupid and inconsiderate a species we can sometimes be.  But on the whole, India, or at least the places I’ve been so far, I must say, has got it down when it comes to conservation efforts.  With so many people you would think that trash piles would be as tall as the hilltops, but every household that I can tell recycles and burns all their organic waste.  Some will burn plastics, and it smells absolutely awful, but overall, most reuse whatever plastic items they have or simply do not use them at all.  Everyone at the market has their shopping bag, and every vendor, from grains to vegetables gives you your purchase in a newspaper parcel wrapped tightly with hemp yarn.  They have plastic bags but rarely need use them as everyone has brought their own.  We call it being “green” in California but in India it is just plain old being considerate of the habitat that surrounds you.  If we had everyone back home be in charge of getting rid of their own waste, I bet you the plastic companies would go out of business, and the amount of items we felt we needed to throw away would shrink ten fold.  I have learned a lot about myself in regards to this these last three weeks, and although I find it embarrassing I am glad to be aware of it, and happy to start attempting a life that will leave a smaller footprint.            

                         

Today I am off to the bakery to try and catch Mr. Yeri, the head baker who I hope can schedule me in for an interview somewhere in the next couple weeks.  I hear he’s extremely busy so I can only hope he’ll have a bit of time to spare for me; if not I’ll be waiting till Sunday to go to church to observe and record.  Yesterday was a Hindu celebration, and the goddesses in their decorated chambers traveled along the streets held by devotees.  I didn’t get the reason for the celebration, but I’m sure I can ask around today.  I also didn’t see any food offerings during the parade, but I’m sure there were some in the actual temple.  This regretfully is probably the closest I’ll get to Hindu rituals in the town of Munnar.  Maybe in our next home I’ll get luckier…